If there’s one thing you know about Grant Yester, it’s that he doesn’t believe in half-measures. Everything you’ve heard and seen about him indicates that he’s never been afraid to overcommit to anything, and often does so without any regard for what might happen as a result of his single-minded focus. Furthermore, of all the areas in his life that this principle shines through, it’s clearest in his approach to gaming. Whether because or in spite of this particular quality, you’ve applied and been selected to play in his latest campaign.
Tonight’s session marks the start of Grant’s ninth campaign as a GM. The stories go that he’s been playing for thirteen years and has taken part in more campaigns than you can count at this point, and while he was initially reluctant to take up the task of running a game for other people rather than just enjoying them all as a player, he was just as quick to throw himself into it head-first as he was with everything else.
The front door is unlocked when you arrive at 21318 Bitter Trace, and the porchlight illuminates the tangle of ivy growing up from the sad patch of dirt that was once a rose garden beneath the living room window. A brass plate bolted to the door bears these words in a flowing script: “NO ADMITTANCE EXCEPT ON PARTY BUSINESS”. This is where two adventures will begin: one for you as a player chosen to take part in Grant’s weekly game night, and one for the character you’ve built to experience the newest universe born from his tireless imagination.
Everyone, please indicate whether your player character is new to Grant’s campaigns or has played in them before. This will affect some information in subsequent posts.
Welcome, one and all! I’ll start off by showering you with thanks once again; without you, I wouldn’t get to run this campaign that I’ve been looking forward to for so long. You guys are awesome, and I was very pleased with your submissions, so I think we’ll have a solid party moving forward.
For now, please finalize your PF characters using the following rules.
20-point buy
Max HP
Core races (I’m open to arguments in favor of others, but they need to be good)
Any Paizo class except Gunslinger
Average gold
I’ll be deciding on a story hook for each of your characters that may influence gameplay on a minor (or major) scale. What you do with it is up to you!
Over the past few years, you’ve heard plenty of buzz about Grant Yester’s campaigns. Now’s your chance to try one of his games for yourself.
You might have heard about it from your fellow gamers, an ad posted at the local gaming store, or a summary from Grant himself. No matter how you found out, you learned this much about the game...
Mirgaard, Frontier of the Gods, has spent the last fifty years recovering from the horrors of the War of Blazes. Guided by the hand of their god of righteous might, the Temerian Regency stands at the forefront of cultural, economic, and technological achievement, bringing its power to bear against anyone who would threaten the livelihood of its citizens.
However, Mirgaard’s purest hopes rest with the stories of Raubert Vanselir, the legendary explorer responsible for charting the face of the continent after the war’s wanton destruction. It has been nineteen years since Vanselir’s disappearance, but his stories still inspire courage and heroism in Mirgaardians to this day, despite the Regency’s best efforts to discredit him as a fraud.
The frontier is your home. Vanselir’s legacy of triumph over adversity inspired you from the day you were born. There is but one question for you to answer: what legends will you leave behind?
What This Campaign Is About:
Welcome to GM Infamous Wes’s Tales from the Tabletop campaign, a spin-off story of The Vanselir Tales, a persistent campaign setting I’ll be returning to frequently in future campaigns. If you’ve already checked out what I had to say in the Interest Check: Tales from the Tabletop PbP thread, you have a pretty good idea of what I’m trying to accomplish here. If you haven't, this is a long-term, heavy RP, open-world, multigenre fantasy campaign with a two parallel stories - one of the characters from the Pathfinder game run by the fictional GM Grant Yester, and one of the players and GM themselves.
Goals
Create an engaging, memorable story that explores human emotion, existential questions, and the power of storytelling in great depth
Give players free reign to explore a fantasy sandbox and the relationships between players in tabletop games
Interact with and affect the world around your characters, which will be reflected in future campaigns
Themes
Medieval Romance - not the love stories. The old-school “knights and chivalry” stories.
Nature and the Wilderness - the natural world doesn’t mess around, and neither do the things that live there.
Courtly Intrigue - for those of you who really hate getting your clothes dirty.
Horror - people are worse than monsters sometimes. You’ll be dealing with both.
The Power of Legends - whether telling stories or making them yourself, see why legends matter.
The premise is relatively simple: you’ll be rolling two characters, a regular ol’ human and their Pathfinder counterpart, and playing both of them in the scenarios described above. This is a very experimental campaign designed to push the limits of what can be done with PbP storytelling, so cut loose and have fun!
How To Apply:
I’m basing character creation guidelines off my usual approach to the rules, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You’re making two characters, so let’s start with the humans! To get started, answer the following questions.
Creating Your Human Player
Has this person played in one of the GM’s campaigns before, or are they brand-new?
What are some basic personality traits that make them distinctive?
What role(s) do they prefer to cover in the party? This should reflect their personality to some degree.
What are they hoping to get out of or see in the campaign?
Creating Your PF Persona
Your Pathfinder character should reflect your human player’s personality to some degree, same as the rule stated above.
20-point buy - Paizo content only; no 3PP.
Max HP at 1st level, then ½ hit die+1+Con past 1st level (think PFS hit points).
Surprise! No traits at creation - these will be awarded periodically based on how your character grows and acts. Gaining drawbacks is also a possibility, so consider yourself warned…
Average starting wealth for your class.
Core races allowed. Featured, uncommon, or special races need to be approved on a case-by-case basis.
Still here? Chomping at the bit to get started? Well, hold your horses - your time for glory will come soon enough. Reply with your basic Human Player and PF Persona ideas, and then you’re done! Recruitment will remain open until April 13th at 11:59 PM, after which I’ll take the weekend to consider submissions and assemble the party.
Questions? Comments? Outrage? Send them via PM, or express your thoughts in the interest check thread.
Thanks for reading, everyone! Let’s make something legendary together.
Strap on your +1 helmets of adventuring, ladies and gentlebeasts of the Paizo Forums! I have a proposal for you.
I’ve always been a huge fan of stories that dig deep into the conventions and structures that shape them on emotional, intellectual, and narratological levels. Considering that I spent most of the last five years studying various narratives and the conversations surrounding them, I recently had the idea of putting that hard-earned [sound of dozens of sets of eyes rolling in unison] English degree to use… through tabletop gaming.
My proposal is this: I would like to run a PbP campaign in which two sets of characters exist simultaneously. One would be more or less true-to-life humans who come together from different walks of life to play a tabletop game, while the other would consist of standard Pathfinder PCs built according to what sort of personality and playstyle the human characters would have. This campaign would lay the foundation for a future campaign I’ll be running IRL, titled The Vanselir Tales, that I’ve been working on for several months and will be GMing to compare results and stories from the two groups.
The common thread that brings this group of players and their characters together in one setting-within-a-setting is the GM, played IRL and in-game by myself. Whether the players are veteran gamers answering an ad posted locally, returning players who’ve been involved in one or several of the GM’s past campaigns, or interested individuals who got talked into trying tabletop for the first time, each one is brought into The Vanselir Tales because the GM hand-picked them to take part in the campaign.
As time goes on and the human PCs learn more about each other, the story would open itself up to all manner of conflict and catharsis. Real-world struggles breaching the realm of the tabletop game, shared experiences bringing the PCs together on more levels than one, and friendships being forged or tested are all possible scenarios within the scope of this game; more than that, they’re goals I’ll be working toward as both stories progress.
”But Infamous Wes,” you ask, ”why bother with all this ‘two worlds’ crap when you can just play a regular campaign to similar effect? Wouldn’t that be simpler for everyone involved? Who do you think you are proposing this stuff, anyway? Also, what makes you so infamous?”
Putting the last question aside, I know this is an ambitious undertaking that requires balancing a LOT of moving parts to pull off without seeming cheesy, heavy-handed, or just plain stupid. With that in mind, I’m ready for the challenge, and I’m looking for players who are willing to put in just as much effort as I am to make this work. I don’t want to settle for just another fantasy campaign when I have the chance to tell a story about the tragedies and triumphs of the human experience, one that may very well help everyone who hears it to better endure or enjoy their own life beyond the game.
This campaign would require communication, hard work, and a significant amount of vulnerability on the part of its players. It would be a study in and celebration of storytelling itself and how it brings people together by confronting them with ideological, philosophical, and psychological challenges. With that being said, I’d be in the same boat as you, and I really think we could make something amazing out of this idea. If you don’t think so, I totally respect that, and I want to hear your thoughts - whether in favor or not - so I can polish this concept and be a better GM moving forward.
The fact that you’ve made it this far in what I originally imagined as a brief paragraph outlining a weird, niche concept for a campaign is much appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to read through this proposal, and I hope you’ll be willing to dive into this different breed of story with me in the near future.
Professor Petros Lorrimor was many things - educator, researcher, father, friend.
Now, he is dead.
The news came without warning and without explanation on a pallid parchment you each received in your travels, inviting you to the village of Ravengro to attend the professor's funeral. The details were sparse, but they promised that "important matters of estate and property requiring your assistance will be settled after the professor is laid to rest".
Whether in honor of a memorable life cut short, out of curiosity of what will become of Lorrimor's legacy and property, or in the hopes of a new adventure to be found deep in the sprawl of Ustalav, the time for you to depart came swiftly.
As you go further north, it's as if the life itself is drained from the landscape - colorful foliage and pleasant birdsong gives way to sparse, spindly plants and the mournful wail of the chill wind. The journey to commemorate one life lost gives you a great deal of time to reflect upon your own existence, and the wilds of Ustalav in which you now find yourself seem to mirror the melancholy occasion.
Finally, you arrive in Ravengro. A heavy pallor, the shade not only of clouds and trees, hangs over the town. A prickling sensation on your neck draws your gaze to the hulking silhouette of a crumbling stone fixture lurking upon the highest hill, the hint of decrepit buildings and towers breaking the shape of its long-abandoned wall. Something within seems to call to you - then again, you're just psyching yourself out, so you shake off the feeling and continue into town.
The funeral is still a few hours away, giving you time to get to grips with your surroundings. Your next endeavor is only just beginning...
Ladies and gentlebeasts of the Paizo Forums, I'd like to ask you for a favor.
Last summer, I had the pleasure of running the Carrion Crown AP for several of my friends, but since we got nowhere close to finishing before real life set in and we went our separate ways, I've been chomping at the bit to revisit what has become one of my favorite APs, if not my absolute favorite. I'd also love to get involved in PbP gameplay, considering how well it fits with my work schedule and lets me space out my game time so I can properly focus on playing.
It's been difficult for me to find players near me who would be interested in joining a PbP campaign, and I don't have the time to dedicate to a real-time game on Roll20, etc. That's why I'm here, and my request is fairly straightforward.
What I'm Looking For:
This game needs a GM and a few other players to get off the ground. Many of the fiddly details - creation guidelines, player count, posting rules, and so on - will likely be up to the GM, but I'm basing my expectations off the following (and very common, I'm led to believe) rules.
Character Creation: 1st Level, 20 Point Buy, Average Wealth
Sources: Paizo Products only
Other: Pick one Trait from list of Campaign Traits
Again, these are expectations that will not necessarily be reflected by the GM or other players - I don't want to backseat-GM anyone.
Even if this post merely gauges some interest for getting another group together for CC, I view that as a step in the right direction. Please give this request your full consideration, and I hope you'll join me for a fresh journey through Carrion Crown.
